The Christ-haunted Landscape

The Christ-haunted Landscape

Author: Susan Ketchin

Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi

Published: 1994

Total Pages: 436

ISBN-13: 9780878056705

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Presents Susan Ketchin's discerning interviews with twelve southerners living and writing in the South. Along with a piece of fiction by each are her penetrating commentaries about the impact of southern religious experience on their work.


The Christ-Haunted Landscape

The Christ-Haunted Landscape

Author: Susan Ketchin

Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi

Published: 2009-11-12

Total Pages: 536

ISBN-13: 1496800966

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Here are Susan Ketchin's discerning interviews with twelve southerners living and writing in the South, and along with a piece of fiction by each are her penetrating commentaries about the impact of southern religious experience on their work. A little more than a generation ago Flannery O'Connor made a startling observation about herself and her fellow southerners: “By and large,” she said, “people in the South still conceive of humanity in theological terms. While the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted. The southerner who isn't convinced of it is very much afraid that he may have been formed in the image and likeness of God.” Guided by O'Connor's perceptive commentary about southerners in general, Susan Ketchin has created a deeply revealing collection that mirrors the pervasive role of religion in the literature by the recent generation of notable southern writers. Ketchin confirms that “old-time religion” remains a potent force in the literature of the contemporary South.


Flannery O'Connor and the Christ-Haunted South

Flannery O'Connor and the Christ-Haunted South

Author: Ralph C. Wood

Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

Published: 2005-05-02

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 9780802829993

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For those looking to deepen their appreciation of Flannery O'Connor, Wood shows how this literary icon's stories, novels, and essays impinge on America's cultural and ecclesial condition.


James Lee Burke and the Soul of Dave Robicheaux

James Lee Burke and the Soul of Dave Robicheaux

Author: Barbara Bogue

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2015-01-27

Total Pages: 220

ISBN-13: 0786483105

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When he created the character Dave Robicheaux, author James Lee Burke lent the New Orleans homicide detective a few of his own characteristics: a daughter named Alafair, a lifetime struggle with alcohol, his Roman Catholic faith, and his love for fishing and the outdoors. On the other hand, Robicheaux is portrayed as a veteran of the Vietnam war, something Burke never experienced firsthand. Yet the demons Burke has known allow him to write convincingly about demons he never knew. Thus Burke has created a realistic, complex and compelling protagonist for his crime fiction series. That depth is one element that elevates Burke's writing above the status of genre fiction. This book explores how James Lee Burke, through the first person narrative of detective Dave Robicheaux, probes the world of law and order, crime and disorder, and one man's internal conflicts with modern moral issues. The first chapter reveals the similarities and differences between real life creator and fictional protagonist. Next, chapters arranged by theme explore the roles of women, Robicheaux's paternal side as revealed through his adopted daughter, the paternal influences in the detective's own life, and the contrasting personality of his half-brother, Jimmie. The next chapters probe the roots of the detective's moral dilemmas: his battle with alcohol, the Vietnam war's lingering trauma, and religion. Next the author explores Burke's use of the supernatural, sense of place, and music to deepen his stories. Final chapters delve into Robicheaux's moral quandaries as a law enforcement officer, the character's contrast to his reckless and funny partner, Clete, and how Burke reveals truths about life through Robicheaux. An interview with Burke is included.


Secular Steeples 2nd edition

Secular Steeples 2nd edition

Author: Conrad Ostwalt

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2012-09-27

Total Pages: 218

ISBN-13: 1441183418

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An exploration of secularization in America, this book provides students with an innovative way of understanding the relationship between religion and secular culture. In Secular Steeples, Conrad Ostwalt challenges long-held assumptions about the relationship between religion and culture and about the impact of secularization. Moving away from the idea that religion will diminish as secularization continues, Ostwalt identifies areas of popular culture where secular and sacred views and objectives interact and enrich each other. The book demonstrates how religious institutions use the secular and popular media of television, movies, and music to make sacred teachings relevant. From megachurches to sports arenas, the Bible to Harry Potter, biker churches to virtual worship communities, Ostwalt demonstrates how religion persists across cultural forms, secular and sacred, with secular culture expressing religious messages and sometimes containing more authentic religious content than official religious teachings. An ideal text for anyone studying religion and popular culture, each chapter provides questions for discussion, a list of important terms and guided readings.


At the Altar of Lynching

At the Altar of Lynching

Author: Donald G. Mathews

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 359

ISBN-13: 1107182972

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Offers a new interpretation of the lynching of Sam Hose through the lens of the religious culture in the evangelical American South.


With signs following

With signs following

Author:

Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi

Published:

Total Pages: 94

ISBN-13: 9781617035395

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From hand-rendered folk signs to high-dollar church marquees, religious messages and imagery saturate the landscape of the American South. In With Signs Following, photographer and southern studies scholar Joe York introduces readers to the role of artistic, witty advertising in southern churches. In seventy black-and-white images of religious signs and other ephemera, he simultaneously presents the factual while encouraging reflection and introspection. Though York's pictures speak volumes, With Signs Following features an equally compelling essay by York. This piece seeks the stories of the sign makers through informal interviews. The combination of images and text offers an insightful, humorous, historically grounded perspective on one of the South's most familiar scenes. In collecting images of religious roadside signs from across the region and interviews with the evangelicals who put them there, Joe York shows us the "Christ-haunted" South as it has never before been considered. Joe York is a freelance photographer and a producer and director of documentary films for the Center for Documentary Projects and the Southern Foodways Alliance at the University of Mississippi. Charles Reagan Wilson is director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi.


Reading, Learning, Teaching Clyde Edgerton

Reading, Learning, Teaching Clyde Edgerton

Author: Yvonne Mason

Publisher: Peter Lang

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 176

ISBN-13: 9780820481432

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This is an introduction to the literature of contemporary American writer Clyde Edgerton. A North Carolina native, Edgerton has been compared to Mark Twain for his easy, humorous style, which is based in oral tradition. Like Twain and other humorous writers, Edgerton's work often contains both biting satire and exploration of very large questions about the human condition. The book contains an overview of each of his novels and his memoir in addition to offering critical commentary on theme, craft, and structure. Pedagogical support is offered with specific strategies that will encourage authentic engagement and learning. Teachers will find specific companion pieces of literature for introducing Edgerton's vivid and challenging work. This book presents the case for including more of Clyde Edgerton's work in our secondary and college English language arts classrooms as a means of revitalizing curricula and challenging the ways we traditionally think about teaching.


A False Sense of Well Being

A False Sense of Well Being

Author: Jeanne Braselton

Publisher: Ballantine Books

Published: 2008-12-10

Total Pages: 402

ISBN-13: 0307484610

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“I was married eleven years before I started imagining how different life could be if my husband were dead. . . .” At thirty-eight, Jessie Maddox subscribes to House Beautiful, Southern Living, even Psychology Today. She has a comfortable life in Glenville, Georgia, with Turner, the most reliable, responsible husband in the world. But after the storybook romance, “happily ever after” never came. Now the housewife who once wanted to be Martha Stewart before there was a Martha Stewart is left to wonder: Where did the marriage go wrong? Why can’t she stop picturing herself as the perfect grieving widow? As Jessie dives headlong into her midlife crisis, she is aided and abetted by a colorful cast of characters in the true Southern tradition: her best friend and next door neighbor Donna, who is having a wild adulterous affair with a younger man; Wanda McNab, the sweater-knitting, cookie-baking grandmother who is charged with killing her abusive husband. Then there’s Jessie’s eccentric family. Her younger sister Ellen, born to be a guest on Jerry Springer, has taken her seven-year-old son and squawking pet birds and left her husband “for good this time” . . . while their mother crosses the dirty words out of library books and alerts everyone to the wonderful bargains at Winn-Dixie, often at the same time. And then there’s the stuffed green headless duck . . . When a trip home to the small town of her childhood raises more questions than it answers, Jessie is forced to face the startling truth head-on–and confront the tragedy that has shadowed her heart and shaken her faith in love . . . and the future. From a brilliant new voice in fiction, here is a darkly comic novel full of revelation and insight. The danger of secrets and the power of confession . . . The pull of family, no matter how crazy. . . The fate of wedlock when one can’t find the key . . . Jeanne Braselton weaves these potent themes into a funny, poignant, utterly engaging story of a woman at the crossroads–and the unforgettable journey she must take to get back home.


Issue VIII

Issue VIII

Author: scissors and spackle

Publisher: Lulu.com

Published: 2012-08-13

Total Pages: 100

ISBN-13: 1105942198

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Issue eight is an expedition, a road trip. We follow the breadcrumbs of spilled sentences from the Deep South, where Terry Barr questions his relationship with his heritage, his soil and his child, to the cluttered streets of India with critically acclaimed screenwriter and actress, Radha Bharadwaj, as she peeks under the covers of sibling love and rivalry. We gather roots and feathers with C. Malcolm Ellsworth in Farmer's Daughter. We eavesdrop on faith, feminism and femininity in taxi back-seats on the roads of Uzbekistan and Egypt with Kristen Hoggatt. Issue eight peeks through the cracks of Labor Day bedrooms and allows us to spy, for just a moment, on other people secrets and stories.